Monday I picked up vacation photographs. We need a digital camera or at least a conventional one without a light leak. More on photographs later.

The other day I saw on CNN that the U.S. women's soccer team worked with Nike to develop a real sports bra. They wanted to eliminate uni-boob. I would be content with no bounce. I wondered where I might find such a thing and HAO reminded me that a Niketown had just opened downtown. Oh yes.

The evidence of the photographs distresses me. I need to work out. I entered Niketown's palatial doors. My footsteps echoed in the mostly empty space. Not empty because new, no, empty because so designed. It is supposedly a modernist (hence bad) trend in architecture to use all available space, which is how you got those very functional, cramped, ugly buildings. It is allegedly a post-modern trait to make the open spaces as much a part of a building as its walls and ceilings. This makes for more attractive buildings, yes, but my theory of retail is that the less stock on the floor, the more the stock has to be marked up to make the rent.

I didn't let that dissuade me.

A sports bra with cup sizes, not just S M and L! Amazing. I found, in a cranny, women's clothing. I recognized the bra from the footage. (I was going to tell a salesperson "Just give me what Brandy Chastain wears," whereupon I probably would be handed a 34 negative A.) I looked for my size and glory be, they had it. I tried it on. I jumped up and down in the dressing room. Uniboob yes, bounce no. Sold.

My goodness me. I'm celebrating not bouncing. How unTiggerish of me.

Monday night I swam, kind of. The park service extended the pool's season by two weeks because of that closing for emergency grouting, which is nice, except that when I showed up at 6:00 for lap swim, the pool was open for family swim instead. I could dodge kids all right, but the rope separating deep from shallow vexed me. I had to duck it every length until just at the end, when someone took it down. That increased my time more than I expected, but I still got a mile under my belt.

Then Tuesday I broke in the bra. I hadn't been to step since early May, I think, except once in June. The instructor asked after my knee, upon which I wore my big honking brace. I used only one set of risers instead of my usual two, and I exerted myself to keep up but not extremely. Because of low budgets, there won't be more drop-in step until September 11, and the pool is closed, so between now and then I shall bike and blade. Starting the 11th, though, I shall go twice a week and no excuses. Ever. Plus I shall probably join the DU gym, for the pool if nothing else. I need a lot else, though.

I have seen the photographs. Photographs I shall never let see the light of day. For about four minutes I tried to tell myself that I've probably always looked that bad in a bathing suit but when I lived near enough natural water that I didn't demand photographic evidence of every indulgence, I just didn't know how bad I looked. I didn't believe me.

RDC took a picture of me running out of the Pacific in which you can see--or you could if I scanned it, which I won't--the sine waves of my cellulite in motion. There's a picture of me from last summer in a sopping white bathing suit that clings to my paunch, which I deluded myself was just a bad picture. This summer I didn't notice the paunch as much as my hips and thighs. Oof.

Just on Sunday I wore a violet diaphonous thing CLH found for me three years ago that I doubted then, the summer I was less fat. I asked RDC if it was too short, and he said no but not to bend over, which I knew. What I meant was "Are my legs too fat to wear a skirt this short?" He probably would have still said no, because I pay him to, but he'd've been lying.

Last Thursday I wore my new violet jersey dress to work and at least a half dozen people complimented me in it, including someone who asked if I have been on the Adkins diet, which she told me is the no-carbohydratess one. No, I haven't been; I don't believe in diets, especially not ridiculous ones like those where people delude themselves that because they've cut out carbs, their bodies spontaneously create muscle from protein even without exercise. Diets are self-deprivation, they make your body believe there's a famine on, and they're doomed to failure. I have always said I could eat what I want as long as I exercise. I've had too much of the first and not enough of the second, is the conclusion I draw from my left thigh.

I have again made my Healthy Eating Resolution. No more maple oatnut scones and mocha frappucinos from Starbucks. No more buying anything to eat downtown, which is more sensible environmentally and financially as well as nutritionally. I shall miss Organic Orbit. That's the big thing, eating-wise: snacking at work. Also no more honey on my breakfast cereal. Lots of dried cranberries and flax seed instead.

And daily exercise: ride to work, rollerblade or walk or Nordic Track afterward, a long walk one weekend day and a swim the other. Plus crunches in the morning, which I almost always laze out of.

I weigh now what I weighed in college, but my body mass composition has changed: the same poundage but greater volume, more fat and less muscle, evident in the clothes that do not fit and the 10-ream boxes of paper that are now an effort to hoist. A trend that cannot continue.