Beautiful Bodies and other Observations

A couple of months ago, I made the decision to lose weight and get in shape. I don’t know what I was thinking; I clearly had a momentary lapse of reason, but I’ve been going to the gym since then and it has been an interesting experience. So much to see and hear and learn about life!

The first few times I did my workout, which included just a few minutes on the elliptical machine, something strange happened and I thought I might have to go to the hospital. Stuff was pouring out of me, dripping down my face and chest. I went over to the manager of the gym and said, “Something’s wrong.”

“What?” he asked.

“Well, something is coming out of my pores and I’m all… wet-like. This can’t be good. This can’t be healthy.”

“It looks like you worked up a pretty good sweat. You’ll be fine.”

“So that’s what that is? Whew. Haven’t done that in a while. Maybe never. Are you sure this is normal?”

He assured me it was and we did not need to call 911 but I wasn’t really certain if I could believe him.

It’s often difficult to get motivated to go. It’s so much easier and more fun to sit for hours on the computer, mindlessly playing games, munching on chips and Snickers bars. However, I have motivators that seem to work. They are called Body Beautiful 1 and Body Beautiful 2. On any given day, the thought of seeing these guys is enough to get me to lace up my sneakers, slap on some deodorant and make it out the door. BB1 is around 6’4 and is surely the cream of the crop of Western Pennsylvania’s gyms. Words can’t describe the sheer elegance, the perfection, the flawlessness of this guy’s physique. The long, lovely legs (yes, on a man! Who’d of thought?) Not to mention his impeccably coifed sandy blond hair, perfectly white even teeth and subtle golden tan. BB2 is a shorter, darker version of BB1, but I’ll surely date either on of them when they ask me out!

I sneak peeks at them often, peering between pieces of equipment as I do my sets. That’s because of my rule: Never let them see you staring at them. I will simply not give them the satisfaction of catching me leering at them mostly because at my current weight and size, I haven’t earned the right to gaze upon their loveliness. Besides, I’m almost 46 and they are probably in their late 20s to early 30s. It’s just not right. But its fun to dream. Cougarville, here we come!

I can’t help admire some of the women, as well. The other day one gal was in the “Gold Members Only” room. She must be entering a body-building contest. I watched her as she stood making various poses for her trainer, in her high heels and teeny bikini. I couldn’t stop looking! Her perfect thighs, butt, back and arms were enough to make me head to the nearest Dairy Queen with a white surrender flag and order their Blizzard dessert in every flavor. I’ll never look like that, I thought! Why am I trying to kid myself?

There’s also a cast of characters that keep things interesting such as Fit Old Gal, and Fit ex-Marine. These two are kind of a geriatric soap opera on steroids. By the way FOG looks and interacts with FEM and brings him up in all our conversations, I think she has a crush on him, and I can’t figure out if they are just friends, dating, or Friends with Benefits, but I’m dying to find out! She’s in her 70s and he’s in his 50s. You go girl!

Then there’s the conversations that take place. One time a guy was bragging quite loudly to a friend, “With this lifting I’m doing, I’ll be looking so hot all the ladies will be stopping in the middle of their sets just to catch a glimpse of me.”

Appropriately, one of the ladies yelled over to him, “Did you hear me roll my eyes from here?”

“Yeah, and when you were rolling them you took a good look at me,” he replied.

Honey, I thought, you can’t compare to BB1 and BB2 and never will! But keep trying.

These kinds of comments are typical in a place where most of the members spend more time gazing at themselves in the mirrors then they do working out. So when someone tells you they worked out for 4 hours? Trust me, counting mirror time, they only worked out for an hour and a half. Of course, my mirror time is limited because the reflection looking back isn’t All That. Not yet, anyway. But as long as BB1 and BB2 keep coming, I’ll get there!

Miracles That Will Make Your Hair Stand on End

It was the fall of 1995. I had been working for a few years at a mattress store and was making pretty good money, but my daughter wasn’t doing well. She was eight years old and having trouble in school. My husband, whom I was separated from, was coming to my apartment to watch her while I worked. Most nights I worked till 9 p.m. He’d end up staying over in my living room all weekend. I wasn’t happy about the situation, and decided I had to quit my job and find a daylight only job.

I quit the job without having another job, and remember crying into the phone to my mother, not knowing what I would do.

I had income, but it wasn’t enough without working. Bill, my husband, was many years older than me, and retired. Therefore, my daughter and I received Social Security benefits under his record, and that would continue until my daughter was 18. I received a mother’s benefit, which would be paid until my daughter was 16.

I received a letter in the mail about a week after I quit the job. The Social Security administration had made some kind of mistake in calculating the benefits due to my daughter and I. They had corrected the mistake, and had deposited over $1,800 into my checking account.

Wow.

Obviously, the money couldn’t have come at a better time. I also found out about a county program, which helped workers like me to obtain job skills. I took a computer class, and was also found eligible for unemployment benefits, even though I’d quit the job, based on the fact that I was a single mom and needed to find employment that would be during school hours.

The best thing about this computer class was that I learned how to type the “right way” and eventually gained pretty good typing skills. This has always been a great help in seeking employment.
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It was late fall, 1997. I’d decided I had to get out of Long Island, as it was too expensive to live there as a single mother. At the urging of my husband, whom I was separated from, I decided to move to the Pittsburgh, PA, area. I found a place 35 minutes from Pittsburgh, with a very reasonable rent. The owner of the apartment complex was a born again Christian. Though I didn’t have a job and had claimed bankruptcy a few years before, he gave me a chance. My parents generously helped me out with $1,000 for the move, which was greatly needed. I never expected them to help out with that much money.
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I was fed up with the public school my daughter was attending and wanted to enroll her in private school. My mom called me to tell me she had seen a show on Oprah which featured a segment about the Children’s Scholarship Fund. It was a fund that helped people pay for private school for their children. She knew I was interested in enrolling my daughter in a private Christian school. A few months later, after filling out the application, I was informed the fund would pay for half of my daughter’s tuition. And that was just the half of the story.

The registration fee was $140. I really didn’t know how I was going to pay it.
Several years before, back in Long Island, I had met with a lawyer regarding a divorce. I started sending him money, planning to pay off the fee over time. But I never went through with it, because I really didn’t have anything extra to send him every month. Years went by, I moved out of Long Island, and I forgot about the money I’d sent him.

One day my soon to be ex, Bill, called me saying I was going to be very happy. It seems the lawyer decided to send me the money back, after all these years. The check took its time in making its way around. It first went to my old address, where Bill and I had lived together, and later that address was for a time occupied by Bill’s niece and her husband. The check then got forwarded to their new address, and they sent it on to Bill in Pennsylvania.

The amount of the check? $140. The exact amount I needed to pay the registration fee.
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Money was very tight and I had more bills then I knew what to do with. My daughter had braces and she had an appointment later that week. I had fallen behind on the payments. When you were behind with payments, their policy was to only check the braces but not do anything to further treatment. Late notices and collections calls were a daily event.

I was reading my devotional and it was a very interesting passage that spoke to my situation. To paraphrase, it said, don’t worry about how you would resolve a situation, look to the Lord and ask Him what He was going to do about it. So I asked the Lord what He would do about my situation.

The very next morning, I went online to look at my checking account. I normally did this every few days to see which checks were paid, and to avoid any unpleasant surprises, like and unexpected overdraft.

Expecting to see about $25 in my account, imagine my surprise when I saw my balance was over $2,600.

I began laughing, pointing at my computer screen like a raving lunatic.
“Ha, ha. You did it again Lord. I know its You!”

I called the bank to see where this money had come from. Once again, like so many years before, it had come from Social Security.

A call to them confirmed, that, for the second time, they had made a mistake in calculating the amount of benefits due my daughter and I. They had directly deposited the corrected amount into my account that morning.

At the dentist's office, one of the assistants came out and said there was a problem, I had money past due. I smiled, and gave them a check for the rest of the balance that was due. My daughter has beautiful teeth.
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In my diary, I had written, “I feel like I’m going to get $10,000. I just keep feeling this amount of money being impressed upon me.”

I wrote it a second time in the journal because I felt it so strongly.
About a month later, Bill informed me that he and his brother had reached an agreement that Walter owed him some money, the origins of which dated back many years before, involving Bills divorce from his first wife and a house he owned jointly with Walter.

Walter was sending Bill a check for $10,000 to start with. The rest of the money would come in sporadic payments.

It was July of 2001. Bill decided to open the account with my name on it, in the event anything should happen to him. He was very generous with the money, giving money to our daughter to go on shopping sprees, and buying her the one thing we both wanted so badly, a computer.

I’ll never forget how excited she was when it arrived and we put it together. All she wanted to do was to go online and onto Instant Messenger. For me, it was a tremendous blessing, because I’d been freelance writing, and had to go to the public library to do my writing.

Sadly, just over a month later, Bill became ill. He was hospitalized twice, and died in September. But, thank the Lord, he had become a Christian, accepting Jesus as his savior before he passed on.

The money left in the account was mine. I was able to buy flowers for his funeral, buy clothes for my daughter for his funeral, and host a lunch after the funeral service for the family, among other things. The money helped get me through after his death, when I was having a difficult time adjusting through my grief.

I still look back at those journal entries, citing $10,000, in amazement and awe.
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I’d been working at a company that helps senior citizens and was going to meet a family. One of the managers, who was also a nurse, was meeting me there.

After we met with the family, sitting in her van, I was asking her about Bill’s death. I described how he had died, of a bleeding ulcer, and the details surrounding his death. After hearing the details, she felt something wasn’t right with it. She encouraged me to talk to a lawyer, to see if I had a case for medical malpractice.
When I arrived home, my daughter, who knew nothing of the conversation I’d just had, startled me with this:

“I think we should have daddy’s death looked into. What if they did something wrong, and he shouldn’t have died?”

I looked at her in shock. I told her I’d just had that very conversation with a nurse that evening. It wasn’t something either of us had ever brought up before.
Three years later, my daughter was awarded a large cash settlement for her father’s death.

If I hadn’t spoken with the nurse that night, it may never have been so.
My daughter generously paid off my car, bought me furniture, helped me pay some bills, and most importantly, has money for her future.

I know Bill would have given his life to see his daughter have this money, since his brother reneged on the money he owed him, and despite his wealth, never helped me out while I was raising my daughter.

For Bill... Sept. 27, 1932 - Sept. 12, 2001

My ex-husband, Bill, died almost five years ago - Sept. 12, 2001. Yes, the day after the infamous 9/11. I feel the pain of people's losses because I lost someone who I later realized was probably the best friend I ever had. He didn't die in such a horrible fashion as to be incinerated in a building, but in a hospital where they all collectively failed to save his life. Well, they paid for it. My daughter was the recipient of a fairly large cash settlement. It took several years, and just last week Bill's beautiful memorial was installed at his gravesite. I haven't seen it yet, but my daughter tells me its really nice.

She chose a black granite with gold lettering, Steeler colors. It also has a Steelers helmet on it. Bill would have been so proud of her for designing that kind of gravestone, and would have chided her for spending so much money, around $2,600. But I know he's smiling down from heaven. And I know he's in heaven because he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior shortly before he died.

Bill was instrumental in us moving to the Pittsburgh area. He was a die-hard Steelers fan and talked about the visit he had made to Pittsburgh in the 60s. After we separated, I found it too expensive to live in Long Island as a single mom, so decided to move. In large part due to his influence, I checked out the Pittsburgh area, and moved here in 1997. Eight months later, Bill followed, moving a short mile away from me so he could be near his daughter.

He loved going to her softball games and cheering her on. She would visit him at his apartment and he'd always slip her money, though he could hardly afford it. Cards with money would arrive every holiday. His two daughters from his first marriage were not in contact with him, so our daughter was really daddy's little girl.

He delighted in seeing his Steelers every Sunday. Finally, after spending his entire life in N.Y., he got to live where his beloved team was. Its just too bad he didn't get to see their Superbowl win last year. Or did he?

I hope you are enjoying Heaven... we will meet again someday.