I haven’t written a word in months. I’ve passed up so many great quips, so many interesting topics that apply to the New 40s—career crossroads, friends who make bad choices, crazy relatives, ex-boyfriends, and the perennial cycle of drinking and weight management. Ah, me.

I heard a great expression today (read, rather, on Facebook, of course—the 40-and-over social playground): “He/She looks like a bag of smashed assholes.” I laughed as loud and as long as I had when I first heard my un-PC friend tell someone to go “suck-a-bag-a-dicks.” Love the imagery, the pure crudeness. I have an affection for shocking manipulation of language.

In grad school, I did a presentation for my “Exploring Voice in Nonfiction” class on sex columnist author Dan Savage’s crude manipulation of language for propaganda and for the practical purposes of communicating in the alt-sex scene. One of my favorites, I explained to the class, was his invention of the word “santorum,” that frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is produced during anal sex. Yes, while my classmates dissected Joan Didion’s and Truman Capote’s prose, I discussed made-up words about butt sex. Perhaps that’s why my classmates never seemed to take me very seriously… But I digress. Savage’s use of “santorum” was a direct hit on Rick Santorum, a former PA senator and arbiter of the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, a proposed bill that basically allowed businesses to discriminate against employees on the basis of religious principles. Santorum, the man, not the frothy mixture, wasn’t a favorite with Savage or the bulk of his readers. In his column, they used the word “santorum” as defined above so many times, that, when one Googled the word “Santorum,” Savage’s definition would appear first, instead of the senator that bore its name. Now, that’s what I can an excellent “smear” campaign!

But anyway, back to our “bag of smashed assholes.” While this term might not have the intention of making political waves, it certainly gives me a chuckle. I also appreciate the context in which I first encountered it:

One of the guys in my Facebook exercise group, the members of which have been destroying me in exercise challenges for over a year now, posted his thoughts on weight obsession. To support his claim that weight is a poor measuring tool for self-confidence, he said that two people could be the exact same height and weight, but one could look fantastic and the other could look like a “bag of smashed assholes.” It’s not about weight, he contended, it’s about fitness and liking what you see in the mirror. Thank you online exercise buddy I have never met!  I can get behind that philosophy, especially since I’ve been lifting weights, running, and riding a Peloton almost daily for the past month (not all on the same day, of course), and my weight hasn’t budged.

There’s a reason for that, and that is I’m still drinking copious amounts of beer. Last weekend, while staying in a town renowned for its craft breweries, my hubby and I discussed allowing beer as my only alcohol because it doesn’t make me crazy or black out, and because it doesn’t make me wake up with crippling hangovers. That’s progress. A little. But the more I work out, I’m discovering, the less inclined I am to want the beer. All it takes with me, sometimes, is a goal to distract me. I’m going to complete a half marathon with my FB exercise group in September. This will be my first half, and my first race other than a zombie 5K, in over ten years. As I train for this race, I am happily reminded of my old running days, of those incremental accomplishments that I made out on the trails or on the pavement every time I went out. It’s a craving like no other—getting outside, pushing up a hill, sprinting down one, feeling my heart beat, sweating it all out. I crave that sleepy peace I feel about an hour after a good run, and that slow settling soreness in my tired legs. I want this, almost as much as I want to drink.

I think my progress is on the horizon. I can’t say that I look fantastic and fit right now, but I’m getting there; and I certainly don’t look like a bag of smashed assholes. Most importantly, though, I have more on my mind than simply losing weight and what I look like. I have that craving for movement and wind and sweat and sore muscles. I crave the burn, which could be my saving grace.