"I think a lot of people who come to visit Mauna Kea come for a reason," said James Kimo Pihana, a ranger with the Office of Mauna Kea Management. "People challenge the mountain. The mountain always wins; it is people who lose. But the mountain accepts challenges."

This is one of those stories about human nature and personality that lacks a tidy ending or an easy moral. Perhaps that's the difference between real life and fairy tales; in real life, you don't get to turn the final page to see the theme of the story and answer the questions.

In real life, you get the questions as you go along, and you answer as best you're able with the information you have at the time.

I stopped going to the gym around the time I started my current job. I worked a lot of overtime, especially in the first six months, and I started promising myself that when life got a bit easier, and I wasn't so mentally exhausted, I'd make time. I didn't expect eighteen months to pass before I finally hit that point; me, who was so religious about going to the gym every day.

I would also like to announce that thanks to my friends, who infected me with the World Cup bug, I did my part on Sunday afternoon to improve international relations.Blame the summer storm, the kind that often brew up here in the late afternoons, pinging the chimney with fat droplets and making Edmund suspect that the sky, really and truly, is falling. I'd settled in with my knitting and had intended to wait until the second half to go to the gym to watch France-Italy, but partway through the first half, the storm grew so fierce that our satellite reception went kaput.

He was the "striped pajamas guy." I still don't know his name, nor did I, until today, know how long I'd seen him in the gym. He was a fixture, just someone that I saw a lot, and someone who put the weight racks through their paces.I spoke to him for the first time today. I brought my dumbbells to my bench at the back of the room, and looked over at the terrifying stack of weights on his bench. Note to self. Don't piss off the guys that bench over 300.

"I envy you that."

"Yeah, well, I've been off for a while. I'm capable of better. This bugs me."

"Funny, I've been saying that myself."

I swallowed my pride and stuck my head into Lynn's office and said, "Can I talk to you?" He walked out of his office, we propped up elbows on the front desk, and I told him about the upcoming hiking trip. I told him about deciding to do my best to prep my body for the trip, and asked if he had suggestions. "Fix your quads. Fix your back. You're gonna use those on the trail more than you realize." Then he grinned, an evil grin that I've learned can only mean heavy physical exertion is about to be suggested, and pointed. "You know what you need, right?"

"Oh, God. What?"

Two years ago, I made myself a promise. I had no idea when the promise would be kept, or how, but that there would come a day when I could turn my thoughts inward and know that I'd be satisfied. In theory, it was so incredibly simple. In practice, it has taken two years, a radical life change, and much effort to pursue.

I will not let my weight dictate what I can or cannot do in this life.

The fat girl struggling on the elliptical survived by reminding herself of all the things she wanted to be able to do. Climb stairs. Dance. Run.

Hike.

You know how, every now and then, you have the need to say something without flowery language, without pretense, because what you have to say doesn't need any dressing-up?

Yeah. Forty-five minutes at level eight, biznitches. (If you said "huh?" then read this entry for the explanation.)

One more level to go and then I will—finally—be back to my pre-pneumonia fitness level.

Whatcha wanna guess I want for my birthday? Admittedly, that's two days from now, but you know what? I think I might just have to go for it.

The lesson is simple: the time that you close off and draw away from your friends is the time that you probably need them the most.There have been no gym stories for a while, and that should be a tip-off that I'm struggling. The month before dragon*con is always a wash for me when it comes to workouts, because my brain gets eaten by the twin towers of tech and DCTV. Coming on top of May's pneumonia diagnosis, things have sputtered for months. What had started off terribly well ended up in a major disappointment for me; the costume I had spent a year and a half researching was one I could not fit into when it came time for dragon*con 2005.

I put it away for another year. Not without tears, though.

The squeak of bedsprings told me Jeff was shifting about for a more comfortable reading spot on the master bed. Their familiar squeal is one of the few sounds that transmit reliably through the walls of our house; from my blanket-wrapped perch in the reading room I could tell what was going on without question or movement.

When I dropped it in, the spoon clinked against the glass. Another cup of Saturday tea, chestnut and opaque from half-and-half and sweetener, sacrificed to the literary gods. Naptime, perhaps. Tired.

I've been a lot of that this week. More than I've casually admitted. More than I've wanted to say. Two major medical procedures in the course of eight days took a lot out of me. I don't like my fallibility, like acknowledging it to others even less, and like acknowledging it to myself least of all. I expected faster recovery from my surgery—after all, my mind says, it was just laparoscopic surgery, so quitcherbitchin, girl, and get back on with life!—and have been frustrated at my slow resumption of my daily activities.

When I say that I'm four days post-op from a laparoscopic tubal ligation and that I'm not working out again yet, I say it with a degree of frustration. I only wish I was kidding. Were it not for the truly spectacular abdominal bruise pattern I'm sporting right now, I probably would've tried to cajole myself into at least a swim by now. (I feel there are some parts of my body that should not be combinations of banana yellow and plum purple. Nevertheless, I have a couple of body parts that are currently a charming combination of those two colors.)

Suzan: …how's the recovery going?
me: Not bad. I'm still sore - I wondered why today and then I looked - I have some pretty significant bruising.
Suzan: No doubt. You've been roto-rootered.

Nevertheless, my healing is progressing at an excellent pace. My incision appears to have been sealed with surgical glue; I can't find any evidence of stitching in the 1.5cm incision I have in my navel. I scar very easily, but what little scar there is will be well-concealed by its position. I stopped wearing a band-aid to cover it two days ago, once elastic waistbands stopped bothering it.

The truth is that the time off is a good thing. I've had some time to knock an unusually-frank dinner conversation with a friend around in my head, and the more I return to it the more I realize how pertinent, how spot-on, the conversation was. I've thrown everything I've had into physically transforming my body in the past fifteen months, and I must begin the process of asking myself at what point I will consider myself "done."

I'm no longer sure.

My body isn't being terribly helpful; my inability to make my weight budge downward since January has as much to do with my resumption of weightlifting as it does some other currently-indefinable x-factor. It is holding steady, fighting and screaming, at around 195 pounds. At this weight I am a solid size 14, a size at which friends are starting to ask why I'm considering going further.

The differences are impossible to ignore. A 2001 photo of me eating beignets at Café du Monde in New Orleans is typical of me in that year, and stands in sharp contrast to a photo of me, approximately fifty pounds lighter, taken the weekend of April 1 in Atlanta with Suzan and Brian. I'm willing to admit that I'm infinitely harder on myself than any of you will ever be, but I'm also the one who sees me naked in the mirror every morning, so I believe some degree of my self-criticism is justified.

Let's face it, kids. No matter my weight, my looks aren't ever going to be my major selling point. I've wrested an average degree of aesthetic respectability out of this body by dropping a good bit of weight, getting a better haircut, and swapping out coke-bottle glasses for contact lenses. I understand how to get the most out of what I have, and am learning to use a good-quality sheath dress and understated makeup to fake some respectability (and even a touch of adulthood!) … but I checked the dictionary and the words "ravishing beauty" still aren't next to my entry. Nor do they show any sign of being added into the definition of 'domesticat' any time soon.

So how far do I want to take this process? How much self-denial and penance is enough for me to say, "Screw it, let's walk away from weight loss and move on to maintenance"? How do I know it's time to start asking these questions?

1. The belated realization that a friend's statement "You're hot, get over it" actually might not have been in jest.
2. The realization that a female friend whom I consider very attractive, and at an ideal weight, is perhaps only one dress size smaller than I am now, despite the fact that I perceive her as being much smaller than me.

I am strong, not tiny. Curvy, if you're being euphemistic; judging by appearances, I got in the lines for "boobs" and "butt" at least twice, if not more. (Apparently the party snacks offered in that line were pretty tasty; I kept coming back for more.) I like throwing heavy weights around, but I dream of the day that I wear a bra with less than a DD cup. I look pretty silly in foofy lingerie—photographic proof is not forthcoming—but make a tightly-fitted shirt into an object of near-blasphemy if I'm not careful.

When I go for my post-op consultation in a week or so, I'm probably going to ask my physician to do some semi-routine blood tests. I'd like to verify, once and for all, that my struggles with weight loss over the past few months don't have a base in hormonal fact. If I am working out regularly, diligently, and strenuously while controlling my diet and the weight doesn't want to come off, there are two potential reasons. One reason: there is another factor inhibiting my weight loss. Another reason: my body has reached a set point, and I should give some thought as to why.

From looking critically at my body, and asking myself what portion of it I can legitimately exercise away, I believe I am capable of losing, at most, two more dress sizes. The further I go, the more I begin to think that a 10 is likely to be my smallest maintainable end result.

A day or two ago I realized I was angry at myself for not 'making progress' toward my goal of finishing the weight loss as I was convalescing. I was disturbed by the vehemence of my frustration, and it made me realize just how accurate my friend's criticism was: am I living, or am I putting aside my life for a period of time that I stubbornly refuse to define, saying only that I'll start my life back up 'when I'm done' and when I feel I've done enough penance to deserve it?

That's when I said to myself, "Two medical procedures in eight days. Take the pain pill, eat the sandwich, and shut the hell up. This is ridiculous. When you're healthy and healed up, you'll resume running, yoga, swimming, and weightlifting. In the meantime, for the love of God, look at the length of that list! The little red size-12 dress will wait in your closet until you're ready for it."

What's enough? 70% of the original goal? 80%? If reaching my original goal is truly unfeasible or unwise, can I learn to accept better health and greater activity levels as substitute goals? Can I learn to look in the mirror, to look at the photos, and honestly accept the images there?

I don't know, but it merits thought—and perhaps another cup of tea. So much for my planned Saturday afternoon nap, I guess.

Tea, anyone?

Certain conversational gambits should come with warning flags. I've decided that any conversation I start that begins with the phrase "So I was on the elliptical, and I was thinking…" should be treated with the same level of skepticism and distrust given to any conversation that starts with "There was this one time at band camp…" Nine times out of ten, it's going to be a boring, dull recitation -- but it's the pesky tenth time around that'll get you when you're not looking, and make you wish you carried a big fat wad of mental floss in your pocket.