this really funny thing happens every morning. recently, because i've started to fear having a little belly, because i don't want to be a little panting shrew for the rest of my life, i've started doing some really meager exercise every morning. it's meager but it's enough to make a shrew pant and that's the idea, right? it's baby steps, but not in the true sense of progress and moving forward, only that baby steps are about all the effort i care to invest in this.

i hold off on eating to do this little exercise because it's pretty incredible the noises one's stomach will make if there's stuff in it, like i'm pregnant or something, like my cereal has a right to be at peace before it dies its fiery death in that acid of mine. so i hold off on eating before i exercise. but i also hold off on exercise because i don't want to do it. so what happens is i'm generally driven to exercise by hunger. i'll even prepare the food in advance as a way to try to convince myself to do this utterly shitty thing, all the worse because it isn't gallant and attractive and 80s leggings when i do it, it's just solitary shrew panting on the rug. and it's such a stubbornly filthy rug, all the sins of humanity are embedded in its fibers, and when i stand up off of that thing i've got them on my back. just to give you an idea of the moral atlas i am.

so when i finally finish these exercises i'm raving with hunger and also panting, my arms collapse to my sides like i'm a desultory monkey. and i fall on the food. i can never restrain myself. and so this horrible scene happens every morning, when the desperate intake of both air and peanutbutter happens, and my mouth is a ragged maelstrom, spitting and swallowing.