I have, of course, gone on and on about my old black velvet Halston jacket, purchased in the mid-seventies, that I haven't been able to wear pretty much since and how it has been starting to fit. “Fit” leaves itself open to interpretation. How tight can a jacket be when it's buttoned and still be said to “fit”? In the last couple of months I've been saying it fits. I wore it for the first time out in the wild for Thanksgiving dinner with my cousin and visiting cousins and kids in San Rafael and said it “fit”. And it did, but, you know, with a little tightness (again when buttoned) across the middle should I, you know, bend over. To say it fit may have been accurate, but just. I think the concept I'm trying to get to here is pretty much obvious to everyone, no explanations really necessary.

This morning there was no doubt. It “fit”. Let the stomach just do what it wanted, let it pooch out like a stomach will when you're not watching, the jacket buttoned, there was still plenty of room. One hundred and sixty pounds, a great deal lighter than I ever thought of becoming. So I guess this is good. Still, it's new territory. Not difficult territory, but since the operation my appetite has been such I'd really have to force myself to the table if I wanted to gain weight. I still assume it will stop at some reasonable number, but when? At what?

I'd been losing weight throughout the year prior to having the hiatal hernia fixed and doing it with little trouble, ascribing the ease of doing it to retirement - lack of stress, no longer near temptation - and a decision to keep my eye on it and let it happen. But with the operation my entire attitude is physically different, the attitude, I'm guessing, (or one of the attitudes of many possible attitudes) of a skinny person. I guess we'll soon enough know the outcome. The idea I might one day weigh something in the one hundred and fifties is, well, mind boggling and perhaps a little disturbing.

You do go on. This is one of those neurotic subjects we don't need to see repeated as we see it repeated everywhere else in our lives.

I know, I know, give me a gold star, aren't I wonderful, but whatever's happened is weird. Fixing the hiatal hernia? That causes your appetite to change? We're not talking a conscious thing here. Getting hungry, and I do occasionally get hungry when I haven't eaten enough, leads to a weird feeling of not wanting to eat anything, nothing sounds tasty, nothing sounds wonderful. Some things like ice cream, I can always eat ice cream, but they don't have the cachet they once had and everything else, except for sometimes, seems unpalatable, although I can sit down and eat them if I force myself. I don't feel ill, I can eat, but something at a chemical level in the body says no. And that's weird. I'm obviously happy with the result, if it's not ultimately harmful, I'm getting skinny, but I'm not anorexic or anything in the actors and models category, and I assume coming off as slowly as it does is good. But again, it's weird as well as good to see, here in Oakland at the edge of the rainbow.

OK, a look at the web and an ideal weight calculator. At six feet and sixty six years they're saying I have a BMI of 21.7 where the number should be in the range 19 - 25. So good. The weight range is 140 to 184 in one calculation, 160 - 174 in a Met Life calculation, perhaps the Met Life is the better? I have no idea. Maybe the best calculation is the old Halston jacket calculation, does it tug when buttoned? By that standard I've arrived.

You're going to have to run a picture of you in the jacket.

I will. After this there's no way around it. I'll get it together. Maybe tomorrow.

Later. So we set out on a walk, now that the symptoms have receded, intending to take a bus downtown and wander through the city, but are diverted by coffee at a table out in front of a nearby coffee shop, not my morning coffee shop, but a sandwich, pastry place not far in the other direction, thinking the head doesn't hurt, but there's a fog of some kind there, a slight tipping in the horizon, best to take it easy. Over and over we climb, hamster with a camera in his cage, where's this going? Again, a small cup of coffee, no desire whatsoever for anything more, the head clearing a bit - With the caffeine? I wouldn't bet on it. - a walk back stopping at the Seven-Eleven look alike for a liter of diet Coke.

Home now, a couple of pictures of alleyways in the camera (don't ask why, we're lucky we didn't get another tree stump), the thought another walk is in order later if this what appears to be clearing head clears up some more. The attitude OK, we're not hurting after all, the afternoon still in its infancy.