Little Letters

Dear Biggest Loser contest at work,

I am not going to win you. But I still win.

The weigh-in is tomorrow. I weighed myself at home on Sunday, and I've lost more than ten pounds.

I wanted to stop gaining weight, and I did.

I hoped to lose some weight, and I did.

I call that an unqualified win.

I never really expected to win the contest, so it was only the initial impetus, not the continuing motivation. Now that I've had some success, I'll try to keep going in this direction. I can definitely feel a difference in how some of my clothes fit, which is both excellent (since some were getting too tight and who can afford to buy a whole new wardrobe? not I) and motivational. In fact, Sunday night as I was brushing my teeth, it occurred to me that my jeans were feeling pretty loose, so after I finished the teeth I tried the old "pull down the jeans without unfastening them" trick, and off they came. I admit that I cackled.

My next goal is to be comfortable wearing the previous-size jeans currently languishing in the bottom dresser drawer. This is attainable.

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To my cube-neighbor at work,

Just because there is room for two people at your desk does not mean that having a working meeting at your desk is a good idea. Of course it has to happen sometimes, but when it's several hours at a time, several days in a row, well, just know that you're driving the neighbors nuts with your constant, even if work-related, concentration-busting conversation.

And if your neighbor happens to have a migraine and is thus unable to drown you out with an MP3 player, well, you extra suck even though that part isn't technically your fault.

Why yes, putting a third person on speaker just makes it that much worse. If you care. Which clearly you don't.

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Dear other co-worker,

I can hear every word you are saying. From three cubes away. In fact, you're a little too loud for me, and I'm about 15 feet away from you. Tone it down. You're not on stage, trying to project so that the person in the last row doesn't miss anything. You're in an office.

As for the hacking cough and the constant, enormous sighs, knock it off already.

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Dear office chair,

Stop it. The way you rotate when I stand up is pointless and potentially dangerous. And when I'm standing up at my desk and you rotate into my ass, it creeps me out. Quit it.

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Dear Mother Nature,

We've made it to the record for rainiest March ever recorded in this area. We're number two for rainiest month ever recorded in this area. Please stop. No one can even build an ark in this weather: the ground is too soft to hold its weight during construction. Flooded roads, flooded basements*, utterly dampened spirits. Water everywhere, hydroplaning, potholes, sinkholes, erosion.

*I just got my feet wet doing laundry. Splash, splash.

I'm going to get greedy here: could we have the sun? And no rain at all for a few weeks? Because really, we're set for a while now with the hydration thing. At this point, you're just wasting it. Someone somewhere must have a drought; give it to them. Pretty please.

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Dear Short-time Syndrome,

It's a little early for you to show up, isn't it? I haven't even given notice yet.

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Dear Stitch and Bitch,

I'm sorry I couldn't make it last night. I did plan to come, but instead my migraine and I left work early and napped for two and a half hours with the cats (who were thrilled).

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Dear Bruins,

It would be so nice if you could figure out why you're super one night and rotten the next. Seriously, can it be so hard? These are wild extremes.

My advice? Pick one. Either play consistently well, or blow the rest of the games, miss the playoffs, and leave me to lick my wounds until training camp. Because this is starting to worry me:


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Dear weekend,

You're starting early for me this week, and yet I'd swear time is running backward. Anything you can do about that? Today took at least three days to get through. I know the headache isn't helping, but could you make a call, and get Thursday night to hurry it up?

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Dear universal-headache-controller,

Could you take the vise off the back of my skull now? It would make life a little easier. I have things to do. Thanks in advance.