Warning: this is going to be kind of whiny. Ignore at will.

I hit a wall this morning on the whole exercise/eating less thing. My NordicTrak, which is actually a replacement for one I wore out, has gone a little haywire. The speedometer thingy stopped working - I can work out at the absolute upper limit of my capacity, and it is still saying "1.5 mph! 0.8 mph! 0.0 mph!" And I know that's not true, because in the past for months - years - working out at the upper limit of my capacity was between 6 and 6.5 mph on the thing.

And, because the distance-meter is tied into the speed, the distance meter is reading abysmally low. As is the "calorie meter," but I'm disinclined to believe it any way. Because there's no way on God's green earth I can burn off 800 calories every morning (what the machine says I do) and still weigh what I do.

The timer still works, and in the long run, that's what I go by. But it frustrates me a little - I was getting 5 miles or slightly over each day, and frankly, it's satisfying to me to be able to finish my workout and tell myself I went five miles.

And yes, I realize this is just How I Do Anything Is How I Do Everything - I'm too dependent on outside sources for validation that what I'm doing is okay - but that's how I am, and probably always how I shall be.

(I know, I know - I could just buy a pedometer and use it. But I don't even know where to get one in this town! I am almost willing to bet the Mart of Wal doesn't carry them - and there's not a sporting-goods store here).

I actually burned myself out early this morning going Extra Fast to try and make the stupid speedometer register. And I stopped a couple times to look at the machine, check the contacts, change the batteries, etc. I can't see where the problem is, and I can't see any way I can fix it. And I suspect it's in the wiring, so it's not a matter of buying a new speedometer unit.

(IF I get home early enough - I have an evening meeting tonight - I'm going to try to do the half-hour I burned myself out too early to do).

And the food thing is getting to me. The whole long slow slog of salads and cold vegetables and cutting back on carbohydrates. And I haven't really eaten meat in over a week. And I find if I get hungry in the afternoon, I just stay hungry, until it's an acceptable time to eat dinner. And that makes me kind of sad. And I'm bracing myself to turn down people when they ask me if I want to go grab lunch somewhere - pretty much all the restaurants in town specialize in deep-fried (or their salads aren't appealing at all), so there's not much that I could really eat.

And - although I know realistically I've been doing this for less than two weeks and should not expect to see any results (hell, the way my body works, I should not expect to see results for approximately a year), it frustrates me that I'm not.

And I just wish - I wish I was one of those tiny birdlike women with a tiny appetite who was something like 5' 2" and 105 pounds. Not just because of the thin thing, it's just I get tired of being this big hulking ungainly person. I wish I could be truly like one of the patrician Pre-Raphaelite models and float around in my gauzy dress, instead of looking like the cowherd who clomped on the scene to be the model for a "rustic" painting.

I harbor a secret wish to be small enough to easily be picked up and carried by a man. (I suppose I could even now, but the man would have to be Andre the Giant. And he's dead.).

I don't know - on the one hand, it frustrates me to want those things (not just because I know I'll never have them) but also because it seems like an essentially unfeminist desire - to want to be tiny, does that mean that I feel like I take up too much space? To be a small patrician woman - am I wishing weakness on myself? Uselessness? I mean, arguably, in times of bad distress (famine, or illness, or war), it was probably the "robust" cowherders who survived intact.

But I don't know. I just get tired, sometimes, of some of the fundamental physical properties of me, and I wish they were more easily changed.

it's also hot here. And dry. And the weather-bunny could save herself some work by just reporting the weather once: "Upper 90s, no chance of rain, air-pollution watch-day so keep the kids indoors and if you have asthma, you're gonna suffer" and then put it on an endless loop. For probably the rest of the summer. (I think that's adding to my frustration and malaise. I hate the summer weather, I hate the heat, I hate that it's not raining and there's no interesting clouds to look at and it's just all same same same and never changing.)

And hey? If I were one of those 5' 2", 105 pound girls, knitting for myself would be quicker and easier than making the giant 44" or 46" bust sweaters.

(Yes, yes, I know there are other problems that being a small person is fraught with - from difficulty in finding pants short enough to greater risk of osteoporosis - but this is my pity party and I don't have to think about those implications).